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Letter From Kireka: Why I will not mourn Kategaya
What you need to know:
Why should I mourn for someone who never answered the door when opportunty knocked? Such are the people who embarass us when they decide not eat big when they are in things.
This country has lost a great son. Or so we have been told. Eriya Kategaya, the man who for decades was labelled the country’s Number Two, seeing that he was always a heartbeat away from power, passed on quietly in a hospital in Nairobi last week. The eulogies flowed in fast and furious. His simplicity was extolled, his down-to-earth nature celebrated. His generosity lauded, his meekness praised. However, I choose to differ. I choose not to mourn Kategaya; I instead bemoan the wasted opportunities.
As one MP observed, Kategaya died with no physical address. How can someone who was a brain of the struggle, who led the external wing of the NRA fight, die without a physical address? How could Kategaya choose to live (and die) in Kiwatule, when even the Johnny-Come-Latelys of the bush War, those who joined the war in Kyengera, own mansions in Kololo and Nakasero? Imagine a man we respected for ages, a man whose body language we studied in order to know what the President was up to, living and dying next to people like Bebe Cool!
I will not mourn Kategaya because he just never followed the script. How can one be the fulcrum of power like he was, and still die with nothing to show for? Where are Kategaya’s castles? People who have spent half the time Kategaya did in power own mansions we mistake for churches. They have sprawling malls dotting our skyline yet poor Kategeya has nothing to show for. Where is Kategaya’s prime piece of land in the city?
People talk of legacy. But how best to create a legacy than physical landmarks which we can always look at and sigh: “There is Eriya’s mall or arcade! It looks great, he built it on a grabbed piece of land.” That is legacy. One will argue that he left memoirs, Impassioned for Freedom, but in a country with a poor reading culture, what is a book for?
We memorise beer brand names easily than we do book titles.
I will not mourn Kategaya. How does one spend more than three decades in civil service and is not mentioned in any single probe report? What is the mark of greatness if you can’t be cited in any major report on the innumerable scandals this country has had? From the days of barter trade and foreign exchange scandals to human rights abuses to junk choppers—how does one never feature in all this yet they were at the heart of government? Was he playing too safe? I remember one philosopher arguing that only those who do nothing avoid controversy.
I will not mourn Kategaya.
When the people of Rwampara still needed him, he opted out of elective politics. No one betrays his people like that. He stayed in government but denied Rwampara the goodies that come with one of your own being in charge. The tarmac roads, the piped water, the electricity—all these would have come. Did he not receive a vision from above like some of his colleagues? Was his not a calling from above? When the Mugabes of this world are at 90 and still going strong what was Kategaya doing leaving elective politics in his 50s? And now see what kind of representation Rwampara enjoys—legislators who are arrested drunk in the middle of the night and they even fail to pronounce their names!
I will not mourn Kategaya.
I was scandalised the other day to learn that he, while a senior member of the ruling party, dropped his children to school and picked them in his own car. Which minister does this? Kategaya and his type are the ones who water down the importance and clout of power. It is they who demystify power even as we seek to leave the peasants in awe of our invincibility. Where were the sirens and lead cars? What about chauffeurs?
Countrymen, I will not mourn Kategaya. With his accomplishments, what was he doing in a Nairobi hospital? Don’t we as taxpayers every year foot bills in billions for people to treat cough and flu in South Africa and Germany? What was he doing in a developing country next door which cannot even count its presidential ballots? I will not mourn Kategaya but will pray that his soul rests in peace.
